AUTHOR ARCHIVES

Carl M. Cannon

November 6, 2006
Two weeks before the 1946 midterms, there wasn't much Harry Truman could do. Heeding the best advice he could find -- but still attempting to draw an inside straight -- Truman lifted unpopular federal price controls on meat, traveled to New York City to address the United Nations, and took ...

September 5, 2006
At the Aspen Ideas Festival earlier this summer, William Jefferson Clinton, as he is now introduced, held court under a tent one evening, basking in his post-presidency celebrity, dispensing political insight, and enjoying the adoration of a mostly liberal audience. As is often the case, two Clintons were present. Not ...

July 21, 2006
Norman Mineta left the Transportation Department on July 7 as the longest-serving secretary in that department's 40 years. His introduction to the government began inauspiciously: As an 11-year-old boy, Mineta was interned in the World War II relocation camps, along with 120,000 other Americans of Japanese descent and Japanese immigrants ...

November 30, 2005
Former White House adviser George Stephanopoulos, once asked to account for a Bill Clinton gaffe, explained that the 42nd president had been "ill-staffed." If President Bush was a finger-pointing kind of guy, there are several candidates in his employ for such a description. Just a year after winning a second ...

September 9, 2005
President Bush's father took the blame when the Federal Emergency Management Agency was slow to respond to Hurricane Hugo in 1989. By 1992, when FEMA's initial response to Hurricane Andrew was perceived as bureaucratic, Bush dispatched then-Transportation Secretary Andy Card down to Florida to kick a few fannies, including the ...

April 25, 2005
It's terrific theater, these hearings into President Bush's United Nations Ambassador-nominee John Bolton, but don't look for more of the same at the confirmation hearing for the solicitor general post. Paul Clement does not try to get recalcitrant bureaucrats fired, does not yell at subordinates, does not engender much odium ...

October 25, 2004
Jamie Rubin served as State Department spokesman during the Clinton administration, but that is not the last job in government he hopes to have. Rubin has been carrying water for John Kerry on foreign-policy issues, and during the Democratic convention this summer, he went so far as to tell reporters ...

March 8, 2004
Saturday, Feb. 21, was to be a quiet day at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., and with the president taking the day off, most of the White House staff did, too. Even the ubiquitous White House Web site was taking a break -- or did, until the death of Spot, the female ...

November 11, 2002
Election Night 2002 fell on President Bush's silver wedding anniversary, which he and Laura celebrated in the White House residence by hosting dinner for five other prominent Republican couples, all the while keeping an eye on the televised election returns coming in from around the country. Mostly, the news for ...

October 21, 2002
If the modern American presidency began during Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, the same cannot be said for the modern vice presidency. In the 82 days he served as vice president under Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman had precisely three official meetings with FDR. Nor was there terribly much in the way ...